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  3. Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of a new discussion paper looking at "the return of

Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of a new discussion paper looking at "the return of

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问题    Brad Setser, an economist at the Council on Foreign Relations, is the author of a new discussion paper looking at "the return of the East Asian savings glut". A summary of his paper begins in arresting fashion with statistics: 【R1】__________
   Prior to the financial crisis, many economists fretted about the problem of global imbalances. Measurement error aside, global trade balances; surpluses in some countries offset deficits in others.
   Why do such imbalances matter? They can create problems in a few ways. Large surpluses can be a side effect of very high savings rates, for example. The large imbalances of the 2000s seemed to reflect unnaturally high savings, which contributed to a "global savings glut" that depressed interest rates and encouraged reckless borrowing. 【R2】__________These sorts of problems still apply in some circumstances.
   Yet another worry has grown more salient in the post-crisis period: the demand drain imposed on the global economy by surplus countries. A rising surplus in one country implies a rising deficit in another. That deficit represents a demand drain; spending that might otherwise have taken place within the economy flowing abroad into another economy. 【R3】__________However, when interest rates are near zero and political constraints prevent governments from using active fiscal policy, the demand drain is dangerous: it generally results in weaker demand, and slower growth.
   Imbalances today look slightly different than they did a decade ago. Then, America accounted for nearly all of the global deficit, while oil-exporting economies were responsible for most of the surplus. Oil balances are less important now, since America produces much more oil domestically than it used to, and since global oil prices have fallen. Instead, the surplus countries are high-saving goods exporters in Europe and East Asia. The big deficit economies, somewhat strikingly, are now America, Australia, Britain and Canada. 【R4】__________ The split is a weird one which deserves more investigation.
   The tricky matter is to work out what will happen next to global imbalances. Mr Setser notes that East Asian surpluses are rising partly because rates of domestic saving are high, but also because investment rates in countries like Korea have been falling. 【R5】__________Depending on how Brexit unfolds, Britain, which had been a rather generous contributor to global demand thanks to its whopping current-account deficit, might find itself pushed rather roughly by financial reality toward a more balanced current account—as the tumbling pound forces Britons to cut back on imports, for example.
   [A] These economies are all of a type: Enghsh-speaking, of course. Rich. But they are also highly financialised economies which specialise in the export of high-value services and safe assets, in the form of both government securities and land.
   [B] Large imbalances can be unhealthy for countries on both sides of the zero; the deficit countries consuming more than they produce risk accumulating unmanageably high debts, while surplus countries can suffer from economic distortions associated with the policies that boost net exports.
   [C] After shrinking dramatically during the crisis and global recession, the imbalances have begun to rebound and are now back to about 1.5% of GDP.
   [D] These countries do suggest a growing vulnerability across the global economy to any future shocks to demand, from excessively rapid increases in American interest rates, for instance.
   [E] The combined savings of China, Japan, Korea and Singapore is about 40 percent of their collective GDP, a thirty-five-year high.
   [F] Meanwhile, Japan continues to run a rather large budget deficit; were it not for that, its current account surplus would likely be larger. And in Europe, recovery has been built atop large and growing current-account surpluses.
   [G] It is not a terribly big deal when the deficit economy can easily use monetary or fiscal policy to step on the accelerator and boost domestic spending: from the government, for instance, or through increased domestic investment.
【R3】
选项
答案G
解析 第四段论述全球经济中的需求流失，指出贸易逆差和需求流失的关系。空格前提到贸易逆差代表着一种需求的流失，即消费需求从贸易逆差国转移到其它国家；空格后是转折，指出当利率趋近零且政府不能使用有效的财政政策时，需求的流失将会很危险。根据这个转折，推断空格前应该是说在何种情况下需求流失并不危险。G提及贸易逆差及消费需求，与本段语境相符，其中It is not a terribly big deal(It指前句提到的消费需求流失现象)，与空格后的dangerous相对立，体现出前后句的转折关系(However)，故G为答案。
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